Political statistics & news review

By the Numbers

The following is a summary of the World Health Organization’s study “United States aid policy and induced abortion in sub-Saharan Africa”. The full study is available here.

While the subject of abortion is one of the most hotly debated issues in American politics, citizens on all sides generally agree on an overall goal of reducing the total number of abortions, though favored methods vary widely.

In light of the recent re-instatement of the Mexico City Policy, it’s worth looking at some data to gauge its effectiveness at the shared goal of abortion reduction.

The Mexico City policy is a United States government policy that requires all global health organizations that receive federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting (mentioning) abortion as a method of family planning in other countries.

In other words, even though US federal funds cannot be used for abortions, if an organization provides abortion or abortion-related services (such as including it as an option in counseling) using any other funds, then that organization is ineligible for US funds.

This policy was originally implemented by Reagan, and has been removed & re-instated with every party change in the White House.

In 2011, the WHO released a study examining abortion rates in sub-saharan Africa from 1994 to 2008. From 1994-2000 the policy was not in place under Clinton, then was put in place under Bush in 2001.

Here is a chart showing results from this study. The “high exposure” vs “low exposure” was classified based on whether US financial assistance was above or below the median for that country.

Rates remained fairly steady during the first few years, and then began to climb after the re-instatement of the policy (indicated by the dotted line). Countries with high exposure – who were more dependent upon US funds for family planning – saw the rate of abortions increase at a much higher rate.

The inauguration of a new president always brings excitement to at least some of the American public; enthusiasm which is demonstrated in part by citizens attending the inauguration itself.

Beyond the tickets available for sections close to the podium, it can be difficult to estimate the crowd in the area going all the way back to the Washington monument, and in the streets on either side.

It’s technically possible to take an extremely-high-resolution picture of a crowd and then count heads, but that’s generally not done given that it’s a huge task. Instead, estimates are made by visually gauging the crowd density over the area(s) that the crowd covers. Even then, estimates can vary widely – some estimates from inauguration day put the estimate at 250k, others as high as 600k. Until further analysis is done by crowd scientists, we likely won’t see an “official” count for a while.

However, the specific crowd count is not the metric the president has espoused; prior to the inauguration, Trump stated that people were coming “in record numbers”. In a statement to the press, White House press secretary Sean Spicer stated “That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe.” This was later re-iterated in a press conference, and by the President himself in an interview.

Determining whether this was the largest inauguration crowd ever is considerably easier to gauge than the crowd count, given that we can simply compare visually to past inaugurations.

Here are pictures from Obama’s 2009 inauguration, vs Trump’s:

Getty / 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee

Trump’s is on the bottom; this was taken at 11:15 EST, near the start of his speech, when the crowd was the largest. It is unknown when exactly the picture from the 2009 inauguration was taken, so it could be at peak capacity or it could not be. This comparison easily shows that there were less people at the 2017 inauguration vs 2009.

It’s important to note that angles play a part in estimating crowd size. Trump stated that the audience “went all the way back to the Washington Monument”, and if one were standing where he was it’s easy to think that:

Scott Olson via Getty

The large white spaces from the previous photos are visible in this one too, but only barely. This is why aerial views are integral to estimating a crowd. Trump stated that there were between 1 and 1.5 million people present; even with the inherent inaccuracy with crowd size reporting, that estimate is definitely far higher than the actual count. From a low angle at one end of a crowd, trying to estimate with any accuracy at all is essentially impossible once the crowd reaches a large size.

Apart from the photo comparison, D.C. Metro statistics also indicate far less activity in 2017 compared to 2009. While not all people attending the inauguration used the metro, the total usage helps illustrate how much activity there was. In 2009, the metro ridership by 11 a.m. was 513,000. In 2017, the ridership by 11 a.m. was 193,000.

While there are certainly some inaccurate estimates for this inauguration’s crowd size floating around out there, to state that it was the largest ever is clearly incorrect.

Spicer also mentioned that the viewership for this inauguration was the largest ever worldwide. For broadcast TV, this was definitely not the case; Nielsen numbers show that 30.6 million people watched the inauguration on TV, compared to 37.8 million in 2009 and the current record of 41.8 million in 1981.

Online viewer records for the 2009 inauguration are scarce, but in 2017 the official White House youtube channel stream had 1.2 million viewers at the time of this writing, while major news outlets had additional viewers (NBC’s had 9.5 million at the time of this writing, the largest I found). Of course, these video’s current counts indicate total watchers, not necessarily those who were watching at the time of the inauguration, nor viewers who watched multiple times.

It is possible that the total viewership for Trump’s inauguration was higher than Obama’s in 2009, but impossible to prove given the unreliability of internet viewer counts & unavailability of such counts from 2009. However, it can be stated with certainty that in-person attendance and TV viewership were not the largest ever for an inauguration.

2016 had a voter-eligible participation rate of 56.9% – only fifty-seven of every hundred people eligible to vote (regardless of actual registration status) cast a ballot.

This is the lowest rate since 2000, which had a VEP rate of 55.3%. The highest rate since then was 62.2% in 2008.

Looking at the state results, and there appears to be a trend between the margin of victory and the VEP rate for that state – i.e. the “safer” a state is for a particular party, the lower the participation rate is likely to be.

For the five states with the lowest VEP, all but one had a margin above 25%. The average margin was 29.56. Those states were Hawaii, California, Utah, Tennessee, and West Virginia; all traditional “safe states”.

For the five states with the highest VEP, all but one had a margin under 3%. The average margin was 3.02. Those states were Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, and Minnesota; two classic “swing states” and several states which were considered toss-ups in RCP leading up to the election.

While the larger trend is clear on the chart, there is a lot of variance. A number of factors could be affecting this; ease/availability of early voting, voting culture, population demographics, etc.

The Electoral College allocates electors to states based on representation in Congress, so a vote for president in a less-populated state is “weighted more” than a vote in a more-populated state; the less populated a state is, the less individual votes are needed to swing a single electoral vote. This has always been the case, but the gap today is larger than it was in the early history of the country.

In the 1796 election (when Washington left office), a vote from the least-populated state (Delaware) was weighted 1.75 times that in the most-populated state (Virginia). In other words, the votes of a Delawarean was nearly powerful as two Virginians.

In the 2016 election, a vote from the least-populated state (Wyoming) was weighted 3.6 times that in the most-populated state (California). A vote in the smallest state compared to the largest has roughly doubled in power since 1796, where a single Wyomingite’s vote is nearly four times as powerful as the vote of a Texan.

This widening gap can largely be attributed to the Apportionment Act of 1911, which capped the House of Representatives at 435 members. Constitutionally, the number of presidential Electors must match the number of representatives in the House.

If the House had continued growing in accordance with population, then we would have several hundred more representatives. With larger-populated states – California, Texas, New York, Florida, etc – having more representatives (and therefore more electors), the vote-weight gap would look more like it did in 1796.

Picture is weights for the 2016 election. My population numbers are based on the 1790 & 2010 census data.